Shame it’s not for anything nice, but I might get my 20 minutes of vitamin D at least! Got to make my slow way round to the doctors, which is around 5 normal person minute’s walk away, I’ll take twice that but I should manage it without coming a cropper. Got to have (another) smear test in preparation for being given Lemtrada. Had one in April but when I get the letter about the results it said there were none D: Either from not enough cells being collected, or a foul up in the processing, so I’ve got to get it done again. )` :
On my way back I might park myself on one of the benches by the river (which is right next to the surgery) and sit in the sun for a bit. Unless the ducks zero in on me, can be a bit intimidating when a whole lot of them head in your direction! Maybe I could lecture them on how bread is actually extremely bad for them, and to go find some river weed to eat, think that’ll ward them off?
I’ve scoured Google for a pic to share, this is the best I can find. The wall on the right’s the doctors’, where that person’s stood is just by the bench. So outside time for me coming up!
Love the picture - you are clever doing that. Now the exposure to the sun for a dose of Vitd3 - does this mean you did a ‘streak’ to the health centre.
That’s actually not my pic, just one I found online. I could take my camera out with me though, I think I will! Blurry pics because I can’t hold it steady any more, coming up! xD Unless I drop it in the river, of course, I don’t know where the wrist strap for it went…
If I do actually take it, and do take any pics, I’ll explain how to share pics on here too.
Oh my, is that whole “20 minutes of sun gives you your daily requirement of vitamin D” thing only if all skin is exposed?! lol
Well I took 7 pics, was expecting them all to either be of my foot or out of focus, because the sun was in my eyes and I couldn’t see the camera screen, I just pointed, hoped and clicked, lol. They’re actually all clear though, it’s a miracle!
These are going to stretch the page massively so I’d better resize them before posting! I’ll just post one first, in case the link for the full size pic trolls me and displays the actual image…testing, testing, let’s see if this works as I hope it will!
Look at this scruff, lol. Is he not fully fledged yet, or do adult ducks moult?
Hi Jellysundae I have a couple of call ducks they moult twice a year the males change from ordinary plumage to their fancy breeding feathers and back again at end of summer yours is probably a youngster. Glad you enjoyed your David Bailey moment
Yes and just like human males there are the ones who think they are gods gift here is a useless fast it is the female call ducks who make the quacking noise and the males make a quiet peeping noise. I was bought my first pair because they made me laugh and they have continued to do that when you are in the garden they quack and it sounds as if the males have told human joke it usually happens when I fall over and never fails to make me laugh ( well usually after the initial swearing that is) Hope you have a good day it is cold and wet and windy here so nothing new there. Can anyone tell me why they call the little blinky thing on the computer a cursor is it because it is so hard to see exactly where the thing is when you are trying to correct mistakes you end up cursing it?sue
Sue! I just googled call ducks because I’d not heard of those before, they’re adorable! Interesting that the males aren’t the noisy ones!
It’s sunny and bright here, with a cool breeze. It’s a day of huge mixed feelings for me, it’s my Nan’s 90th birthday today. I keep nearly crying, which is something because the MS really has quashed a lot of my ability to have feelings. My Nan’s in a home for Alzheimer’s patients now as she has stage 6 vascular dementia. She looks every one of her 90 years now, very frail because she can’t do much other than sit in her room; her eyesight’s really bad, and she’s not good on her feet. If I got in to see her there’s a pretty high chance that she’d not know who I was, and even if she did, once I’d left the room she’d not be aware I’d been there, she’s not who she was any more, dementia has stolen my Nan.
Yes, lt is the ducks that quack and the drakes make a peeping noise. My friend has a large pond next to her house with lots of wild ducks - mallards and Moor hens [and moor cocks] - a couple of lady call ducks arrived and drove my friends mad with the noise they made day and night.
The fox has taken all but one of my ducks - so she is now in with the hens. She is an lndian Runner - black and white. The fox took all of our Khaki Campbells. And our Crested Saxonys - they are the ones that look as if they have a feather beret on their heads. We have an electric mesh fence around them - but still the fox got them all.
Sorry about your nan - Jelly. My mum is nearly 92 - and still lives on her own. Just around the corner from me. We get all her shopping - and she manages on ‘ping’ meals that she puts in the micro-wave. Curry is her favourite! l call round most days - on my scooter with my dogs. She loves to see the dogs and makes them sit for a biscuit.
Just looked up ‘call ducks’ in my little book - it says - ‘’ This noisy duck is full of character so not a good choice if you have peace-loving neighbours.‘’ They come in several colour variations - not just white - grey/blue/buff/pastel/khaki/butterscotch/chocolate/snowy/spot and black. Well l could just eat right now a chocolate or butterscotch duck.
How great that your mum’s still doing ok at home! That’s so lovely for you. I feel so sorry for my mum, she’s stuck in the middle of me and nan. At least she can talk to me about nan, and I let her do that though I’ll not lie, it does my mental health no good at all. But she’s lost the support she’d have got from her mum, about me, if she was still compos mentis. Nan doesn’t know about my MS, when I was diagnosed her dementia wasn’t as bad as it is now, and on a good day she’d have understood what she was being told, but what would have been to point in telling her? Nothing positive would have been gained from doing that, quite the opposite. Anyway I need to get off this subject, because I’m welling up again now.
Foxes are super clever, aren’t they. Got to admire them for their tenacity and survival abilities, just such a shame when you end up suffering because of them. How did it get the better of an electric fence? I used to work with a lady who had ducks and chickens in her back garden, I visited her one day and they followed her around her kitchen in a little conga train, it was adorable! Though she did chase the cockerel out with a broom because he was getting bolshy, lol.
Will you replace the ones the fox has taken? Or would that basically just be setting some more meals up for it? Were the others taken recently? Are penned animals more at risk this time of the year because predators have babies to feed?
Hi Jelly so sorry about your Nan I’ll tell you a story about mine I hope will make you smile. Just after I got married 31 years ago OH and I volunteered to look after my nan for the evening as my parents were going out.She had come to live with them as she’d had a fall ,she had pagets disease and had broken her wrist as well as being very confused and lived on 14th floor of block of flats ( not the best place for an old ldy with one of the first pacemakers and her health problems). She seemed really settled watching her TV in bed so OH and I sat down stairs but after a while she shouted something and on investigation we found her lying across the bed totally naked,her cast sat on the bedside table with a bunch of flowers in it and she said she was about to pay the milkman ! ! My hubby left me to sort her out as he made a rather rapid exit I later found him downstairs he had got a fit of the giggles and didn’t want to upset Nan. You have to try to remember your Nan as she was before the terrible condition took her. Mine gave so many frights like going to Canada she was told not to go through the metal detector at the airport as it would interfere with her pacemaker, she of course missed her flight as she was rushed to hospital. The time my nephew got into trouble at school when he wrote that his great Nanna was in hospital for new batteries the teacher accused him of making things up he also wrote the Mary had Jesus by an immaculate contraption !
Well as for ducks we have an electric fence to help keep our ducks in but one of the little darlings found that if it jumped up and dived through a hole in the net so long as it wasn’t touching the floor the fence wouldn’t give it a shock (it is only a little shock) she soon taught the others so the fence is now reinforced with bird netting it’s know as Fort Ducks. I hope this makes you smile a bit, and spacejaket I have a butterscotch duck but here they are called apricots but I think she may be a bit tough she is 15
HAHA! Yes, laughing success! And I’ve just talked to mum on the phone and she said she had a good visit with nan today; she liked the dress mum gave her, mum took her down by the river in a wheelchair and bought her an ice cream (nan loves Cornettos) and nan talked about a trip she made on her birthday last year to Windsor, with her friend Barbara. Mum says that trip was at least 20 years ago, Barbara’s been dead about 15, but nan enjoyed reminiscing so it was all good. I feel a lot better now, knowing both mum and nan have had some nice moments today.
15 years old! Is that a long time for a duck, or normal? I guess it’s unlikely that a wild duck wiould ever live that long, but when animals are kept in safely in captivity they get to test their species’ lifespan to the extreme!
So glad your Mum has had a good day with Nan and that you are feeling a little better it is strange how Nan’s can get time lapses mine used to think I was my auntie who I looked like when she was young, sometimes it was easier to allow her to think that than tell her she had died years ago it would have only upset her and she wouldn’t have understood.
I have no idea about how long call ducks live for I have a book on keeping them but it doesn’t say how long they live, but Clarissa ( so named because she is quite gobby ) gets about fine she loves her little pond and still lays the odd egg usually where she shouldn’t but who cares.
I can never think of cornettos without remembering a comedy sketch we did in the 6th form at school involving skateboards and singing "just one cornetto give it to me delicious ice cream from Italy " unfortunately one girl skated off the stage.
Oh lol, that sounds like one of those typically mortifying school memories, I bet she’d be thrilled to know you remembered that xD Cornettos are SO rubbish now, definitely one of those foods to not eat these days, I’ll almost go as far as calling them horrible now.
I’ve just looked on google to see if Wall’s is owned by Nestle now, as everything they touch turns to dross, but it’s Unilever. Maybe Cornettos are made from washing powder rather than cream now, that would explain a lot. xD
My Dad used to work for unilever’s food side called Vandenbreg and Jergen his claim to fame was he designed the machines that made elmlea and delight. Elmlea used to be good we trialled some of the first stuff to be made at our daughter’s christening so see if people could tell the difference it came in unmarked tubs and none of the guests could tell it wasn’t cream but I bet they could now it is awful. Dad was always loyal to his employer it was unheard of for my parents to use Proctor and Gamble products just as well they are no longer with us as I hardly ever use unilever stuff anymore in fact I am unable to use anything that is highly processed as I have crohns.
The demise of things we used to enjoy could be due to our changing tastes but is more likely due to corperate penny pinching and profit chasing than anything else.
Got up at 5.30 and it was glorious sunshine but now it is overcast and cloudy but I need to play in the garden feeling guilty I was bought some plants weeks ago and they are still in the pots but I have remembered to water them that is a bonus. So I will be dodging the showers to throw them into the holes OH digs for me that is when we have removed the foot high buttercups that have invaded our garden while my back was turned. Hope your weather is better than mine and enjoy your day Sue
Yeah, while the manufacturers would no doubt try and convince us it’s our adult taste buds making food taste different, most of the time it is ingredient changing, isn’t it. Kipling’s pastry…blech! All commercial pastry being made from oil now unless it states “all butter”, and boy don’t you pay a premium for that… Actually oil’s replaces butter in everything, hasn’t it, and that’s why all pastry and biscuits and so on are at best, disappointing, and at worse, nasty, now I have no idea how to properly punctuate that sentence…
It’s years since I bought Elmlea, sounds like a good move on my part there! My mum’s got lactose intolerance issues and she uses an Alpro cream alternative, that’s pretty nice,. Have you tried that? I don’t know much about Crohn’s so I don’t know what kind of foods you need to avoid.
I seem to have slept for a long time today, it was half past 12 when I got up! I’d been semi-awake for a while, but drifting. Looks pretty nice outside here, patchy cloud so sunny intervals. Tomorrow I need to get myself out and go to Iceland and get some milk. Sad that I have to really psyche myself up to make what is just a 5 minute round trip even at my reduced walking capabilities (I should have gone today but, nope…) Rain’s threatened for tomorrow, but not when I’m likely to be awake!
I’d take the buttercups off your hands if I could! I love wild flowers, I suspect they’d not love trying to survive on my windowsills much though. I have a bucket of compost sat in the kitchen, patiently waiting for me to do something with it. I did at least cover it so it doesn’t turn to dry dust. But it may be past time for anything to want to germinate in it before my brain decides it’s going to let me do something about it!
So they’re basically just like human males; getting dressed up before they go out on the pull on a Saturday night? xD
